Those pre-iPhone smartphones Jobs displayed all shared the same fundamental design: half-screen, half keyboard, and an up/down/left/right navigation controller. Now look at this prototype Android phone Gizmodo spotted in December 2007 — 11 months after the iPhone introduction. Android was conceived of that same old model — the prototype Gizmodo found in December 2007 would have fit perfectly alongside the other four phones in Jobs’s keynote slide.

The gaping chasm between that Treo-ish/BlackBerry-ish prototype Android device and the HTC G1 that went on sale a year later (let alone the Nexus One today) was bridged by ideas from the iPhone.

The iPhone introduced a new model. A true great leap forward in the state of the art.

The man must have a memory sharp as a razor to recall those slides.

I imagine his office to be filled to the ceiling with bankers boxes full of quotes and financial reports, corkboards of “claim chowder”, and walls covered in relational diagrams, all ringed around a massive, loud typewriter.

About

Chad Kohalyk thinks and writes about the intersection of technology and politics. He has a master's degree in War Studies, and is active in the startup community. He resides in Kelowna, BC Canada, often making trips to Japan. More →